Sunday, October 10, 2010

Listen to Live Feed of Whale Songs

Michael Andre’, a bioacoustician at the Technical University of Catalonia in Barcelona, Spain has come up with an ingenious method of listening to live feeds of whale songs. He has created a website where you can listen to the live feeds.

The songs come from 10 hydrophones spread around European waters, and one in Canada. Several more are planned to come soon in Canada and in Asia.The primary aim of the researchers was to study the effects of human activity on whales and dolphins. The hydrophones are placed on the seabed, on existing research platforms that monitor earthquakes and tsunami. The streams of audio data go to a server where the signals are analysed and published directly on the internet. An algorithm developed by Andre’ filters the different frequencies in the signal to identify specific sounds, including the songs of 26 species of whales and dolphins.

The new system could also reveal the effects of noise pollution on whales’ .It should be possible to determine if animals change course in response to bursts of noise, or alter their preferred routes because of new sources of noise like shipping routes or harbours.

So what are you waiting for? Go ahead and listen to the whale songs. Click here.